“Powerful beyond words” is how Rosario Cervantes described the experience of witnessing San Francisco teacher, Nancy Obregon speaking truth boldly to Maximus representatives, with each phrase enthusiastically echoed by some 350+ community voices in the room.

"I am a teacher. Born and raised in San Francisco. I’ve been teaching for 21 years. I’ve affected over a...

After a national lawsuit, dozens of direct actions, online petitions, op-eds and ceaseless pressure we are pleased to report that Right to the City alliance (RTTC) Homes For All campaign, of which we are a part, finally won funding to the National Housing Trust Fund!

Mel Watt, the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), announced his directive last...

¡Español sigue!There could be no better tribute to the late great housing rights fighter Ted Gullicksen then this past Tuesday’s tenant right’s victory dedicated to the fight against local and global displacement.
Tuesday, October 21, CJJC members led the way, winning a victory not just for Black and Latin@ families, but for the renter majority in Oakland.Our Tenant Protection Ordinance...

This past Tuesday the Community and Economic Development Committee heard testimony from courageous tenants, Just Cause leaders, and allies who all spoke out in support of the Tenant Protection Ordinance (TPO) in Oakland. Along with all the supporters were a lot of landlords and 2 major landlord groups – the East Bay Rental Housing Association and the Jobs and Housing Coalition, who came out...

Thousands of Oakland's tenants are being intimidated by their landlords, harassed, or neglected in the landlords attempts to push them out. We have worked with Council member Dan Kalb to draft an ordinance that will stop this behavior and fine landlords that intimidate or threaten tenants, and we need your support to get the council to...

CJJC rolled 20 strong with members and community supporters early this morning to demand that landlord's John Van Eyck, Caryl Esteves, and Alfred Wong stop the evictions & harassment of our members Mustafa Solomon and Amy Ornoski in North Oakland.

The tenants -- who live in two separate units on the same property -- have had to deal with such issues...

"The rental shortage has made the most vulnerable tenants susceptible to eviction. “So many of our clients are people of color, people with disabilities, people who have suffered extreme health crises or a long-term chronic illness,” said Christine Donahoe, a staff attorney with Legal Action of Wisconsin. "

NEW:
As of August 1, there are new regulations around rent increases for capital improvements.

The following is a brief summary of the recent amendments to the Rent Adjustment Ordinance and the Rent Adjustment Program Regulations, and is not intended to be a complete description or a substitute for the laws themselves.

• The number of evictions in 2013 has surpassed evictions in 2006, the height of the real estate bubble. Total no-fault evictions are up 17% compared to 2006.
• Between 2012 and 2013 evictions have increased by 115%
• Ellis Act use went up 175% between 2012...

The West Oakland Specific Plan (W.O.S.P.) is a zoning plan that is an example of development WITH displacement. It makes no effort to mitigate the impacts of gentrification and instead opens up the neighborhood even more for investment opportunities. There are even parts of the plan that specifically state that displacement will occur and that West Oakland is hampered by its concentration of low-income people.

WHAT: March to Oakland Planning Commission meeting to protest West Oakland Specific Plan

WHEN: Wednesday, June 11: 4:00 pm / Defremary Park at 18th and Adeline, West Oakland and then on to City Hall at 5:30pm, Planning Commission mtg begins at 6pm)

WHO: Community residents and organizations, Causa Justa :: Just Cause, and othersResidents will march on Wednesday (June 11) from Defremary Park at 18th and Adeline, West Oakland in West Oakland to City Hall to tell the Planning Commission not to adopt the West Oakland Specific Plan (WOSP).

Read more about the plan HERE, by Advance the Struggle. RSVP for the march HERE

Community opposition to the plan has been growing over the last several months as it has become clear that there are few measures included that would help keep current residents in the neighborhood, such as protections for renters, preservation of land for low-income housing and community use, significant affordable housing requirements, or community control over development decisions.

A report recently released by Causa Justa::Just Cause, outlines the causes of gentrification in the Bay Area as well as a number of recommendations for how local governments can slow, prevent and reverse it. The report is available for download here.

The Grand Southern Hotel has some of the worst conditions out of all of the SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels in the Mission district. The hotel is home to many immigrant families with children. Tenants say they have been dealing with constant harassment by manager Luis Rivera and landlord Musa Salem and his family.

Working alongside the Mission SRO Collaborative (MSROC) we invited Supervisor David Campos to visit the hotel with former SF Supervisor and current director of Housing, Opportunity, Partnerships & Engagement (HOPE) Bevan Dufty. “They saw firsthand how the manager was drunk on the job and the horrible conditions of the hotel. They went door to door and heard the concerns of the tenants,” says Sanyika Bryant, CJJC Tenant Rights Organizer.

A few weeks ago Supervisor Campos called a meeting with the tenants, landlord and manager. The manager agreed to all but one of the procedural and repair demands of the tenants, thanks to our collective organizing and the pressure of Supervisor Campos — who took a hard stand against the landlord and the manager.

Here is all that we won:
• An end to the collection of late fees (as these aren't in any of the tenants' leases)
• A written complaint process
• Standardized receipts
• Repairs to the carpets in several of the rooms
• The removal of signs that make children feel unwelcomed in the building
• One family got a significant rent reduction because the landlord had given them a higher rent based off of the size of their family, but their room was the same size as other rooms
• Repairs to the water heating system
• Monthly pest control

The fight isn't over and we're going to be monitoring the implementation of the new policies, but we just wanted to let you know the good news.

MARCH 18, 2014 — Laura Guzman, the director of homeless services for Mission Neighborhood Health Center, had the question that was on everybody’s mind at a recent protest at the 16th and Mission BART plaza. “Who,” she asked, “is Clean up the Plaza?”

More than 100 San Franciscans, including members of Mission-based organizations like Causa Justa Just Cause, the Mission SRO Collaborative, La Colectiva, PODER, and the Housing Rights Committee, had come together under a new banner: “La Plaza 16 Coalición.” Their chief target was Maximus Real Estate Partners’ proposed development of two 10-story towers with 351 units of housing and 32,000-square feet of retail space on the northeast corner of the intersection.

The leaflet distributed by protesters laid out the concerns of the coalition in English and Spanish: “We are tired of seeing our neighbors displaced from their homes and our city for the profit and benefit of a privileged few. Plaza 16 belongs to those that hang out here and work/live here. We, not a private development company, should make a plan for OUR PLAZA.”

But mingled with outrage at the idea of $3,500/month rentals and high-rises that will cast a shadow over nearby Marshall Elementary School’s playground is suspicion about the Clean up the Plaza campaign that began months before the development plans went public.
It seemed like a remarkable coincidence: Just before a developer starts pushing high-end housing in a low-income area, a new organization with significant resources starts pushing to get homeless people out of the area.

Had the developers been laying the groundwork for their project through an Astroturf campaign? Why didn’t anyone in the community know who was behind this supposedly community-based campaign? Where did the money for glossy posters and direct mail come from? Who was Gil Chavez, the organizer named on the campaign’s website? And was Clean up the Plaza responsible for the “three-month police occupation of the plaza” that began in September and, according to Guzman, led to increased harassment of the homeless and residents who frequent the plaza?

Speaking to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, activist Andy Blue said of Clean up the Plaza and the proposed development, “Everyone has assumed those are connected, but nobody has found the smoking gun.” Mission District Supervisor David Campos hinted at a connection as well, during an Assembly race debate with Supervisor David Chiu. When Chiu challenged Campos over the thousands of signatures gathered by Clean up the Plaza as a sign of his ineffective leadership in the Mission, Campos replied, “It’s a way to get a luxury condo project.”

Whether a smoking gun linking Maximus Real Estate Partners to the formation and funding of Clean up the Plaza exists remains to be seen, but there is a clear connection between the two projects, in the form of San Francisco’s notorious political operative, Jack Davis. On Thursday, the Guardian revealed Jack Davis’s involvement with Clean up the Plaza. Following interviews with Davis, Gil Chavez, and Maximus representative Bert...

This event marks the first community organized discussion on the proposed monster project and follows previous action by the coalition opposing the development on February 1, 2014.

The Forum is organized and facilitated by the Plaza 16 Coalicion/Coalition, a broad and diverse coalition of community organizations, merchants, and neighbors demanding a halt to the current proposal and all market-rate developments in the Mission until housing for the poor and working class is fully restored and practices of community based planning for people not profit are implemented.

The La Plaza 16 Coalición/ The Plaza 16 Coalition has come together to advocate for the 1979 Mission Street site to be used for affordable housing. Our coalition builds on the decades of planning and organizing in the Mission that created Plan Popular and won affordable housing for our communities.

The Coalition does not believe the currently proposed development project will primarily serve the needs of the existing community and thus opposes the development until it is tailored to meet the need for truly affordable housing in the neighborhood. Member organizations include: CARECEN, Causa Justa :: Just Cause, Dolores Street Community Services, Eviction Mapping Project, Housing Rights Committee, Latino Democratic Club, Mission Economic Development Agency, Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, and PODER.

Meanwhile, read CJJCs report which examines the effects of gentrification and displacement in San Francisco and Oakland neighborhoods, and which calls for urgent housing policy changes.

As tenants in both San Francisco and Oakland reel under the highest rents in the nation, new development and investment (such as this proposed 16th St. Bart Plaza monster development) is causing tremendous market pressures destabilizing everything from housing to health to political power.

"Gentrification is the process of social, cultural, and economic transformation that is taking place in many centrally located urban neighborhoods which have experienced historic disinvestment. It involves significant increases in rental and for-sale housing costs, the in-migration of higher-income, white, and college-educated residents and the out-migration of longtime residents, many of whom may be renters, low-income residents, and people of color." —Development Without Displacement

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Causa Justa :: Just Cause is a multi-racial grass roots housing and immigrant rights organization building community leadership to achieve justice for low-income San Francisco and Oakland residents. We have offices on both sides of the Bay.

Friend us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter at causajusta1 WHY? Because #housingisahumanright #Plazasixteen